A two-day, invitation-only forum in Nairobi bringing together governments, development institutions, and AI practitioners to advance AI adoption, infrastructure, and inclusive impact across the African continent, co-hosted by Kenya, Italy, and UNDP.
The Nairobi AI Forum is a high-level, invitation-only gathering co-hosted by the governments of Kenya and Italy and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Held in Nairobi, Kenya, over two days, the forum brings together policymakers, development finance institutions, AI practitioners, and civil society to address AI adoption, infrastructure development, and inclusive outcomes across Africa. This is its first edition, taking place in February 2026.
The inaugural edition of the Nairobi AI Forum runs on 9 and 10 February 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya. The specific venue has not been publicly disclosed as of verification. The edition carries no named theme beyond its overarching focus on AI for development, inclusion, and policy across the African continent.
February places this forum in the opening weeks of the global events year, well ahead of the main European and North American AI conference cluster that typically densifies from March onward. Its Nairobi location is deliberate: Kenya is one of Africa's leading technology hubs, home to a growing AI research community and a government with an active digital economy agenda. For organisations working on development-oriented AI, the February timing offers an early policy reference point before multilateral agendas consolidate later in the year.
No detailed agenda with stage counts, confirmed session names, or speaker lists has been publicly published as of verification. The event is invitation-only and the full programme is not disclosed on the public website.
The thematic agenda centres on artificial intelligence as a tool for economic and social development in Africa. Documented focus areas include AI adoption at institutional and national scale, infrastructure requirements for AI deployment in lower-resource environments, inclusive AI design and impact, and the role of international policy frameworks and multilateral coordination in shaping the continent's AI trajectory. UNDP's involvement signals particular attention to development finance and sovereign capacity-building dimensions.
The forum's networking architecture is built around breakout discussions and roundtables rather than a conventional exhibition or open-floor meeting system. This format concentrates dialogue in smaller groups, typically organised around specific themes or participant profiles, rather than distributing it across a large plenary-dominated programme. No advance scheduling tool or official networking application has been disclosed. Given the invitation-only access model, participation itself functions as a filtering mechanism that determines who enters the meeting environment.
The forum targets organisations at the intersection of AI technology and development policy, with a specific African lens. That means national governments with active AI strategies, multilateral development institutions, and private sector actors whose AI work has direct development-sector relevance. It is not a generalist AI industry event: the co-hosting structure (Kenya, Italy, UNDP) signals a primary orientation toward public institutions, policy dialogue, and development finance rather than commercial AI product or investment markets.
Five categories of potential attendees are likely to find the forum a poor fit. First, commercial AI vendors seeking a product showcase or business development environment: the format offers no exhibition component and the audience is not a buyer market in the conventional sense. Second, AI investors and venture capital firms looking for deal flow or portfolio company exposure: there is no investment-facing programme structure documented. Third, AI researchers focused exclusively on technical benchmarks or model development with no policy or development application angle: the programme orients toward implementation and governance rather than research frontiers. Fourth, organisations with no presence, strategy, or partnerships on the African continent: the geographic and thematic focus is specific enough that a non-Africa mandate reduces return substantially. Fifth, participants seeking an open-registration conference: the invitation-only access model means organisations that have not already been identified within the co-hosting network are unlikely to secure attendance through public registration.
The co-hosting structure links the forum directly to UNDP's global AI for development work and to the bilateral digital cooperation agenda between Kenya and Italy. This positions it as part of a multilateral institutional effort rather than an independent commercial conference. Whether the forum is formally embedded in a recurring programme cycle or treaty-level commitment is not publicly documented as of verification.
The Nairobi AI Forum is documented as the first edition of what is described as an annual event. Whether the annual periodicity is confirmed by a formal commitment from the co-hosting governments and UNDP, or reflects the organiser's stated intention, is not specified in publicly available material as of verification.
Nairobi functions as the default capital of East African technology activity, anchored by the iHub innovation cluster, the Konza Technopolis project, and a growing concentration of regional offices for global technology companies and development institutions. The city hosts the UNEP and UN-Habitat headquarters, giving it a structural relationship with the multilateral system that makes it a natural venue for a UNDP-co-hosted event. The specific venue for the February 2026 edition has not been publicly disclosed.
The organiser behind the Nairobi AI Forum is the entity operating under the domain aihubfordevelopment.org. Its formal name, founding year, country of registration, and portfolio of events are not publicly disclosed as of verification. The organiser is categorised as a commercial publisher. The forum is co-hosted with the governments of Kenya and Italy and with UNDP, which suggests the organiser operates in a convening or platform capacity alongside these institutional co-hosts rather than as the sole programme authority.
The Nairobi AI Forum's significance lies less in its scale than in its co-hosting architecture: a trilateral public-sector structure involving an African government, a G7 government, and UNDP gives it an institutional weight that most commercially organised AI events on the continent do not carry, and positions it as a reference event for sovereign AI policy dialogue in Africa from its first edition.
The Nairobi AI Forum operates on an invitation-only basis. Public registration is not available. The official website is located at aihubfordevelopment.org/nairobi-ai-forum-2026. Delegate pricing is not disclosed. Organisations seeking participation should direct enquiries to the organiser or to the co-hosting institutional networks (the governments of Kenya and Italy or UNDP), as no public application process has been documented as of verification.
No public application or nomination process is documented on the official website as of verification. Given the co-hosting structure involving two national governments and UNDP, invitations are likely issued through institutional channels connected to those bodies. Organisations without an existing relationship with the Kenya government, the Italian government, or UNDP's Africa-facing programmes may face significant barriers to entry.
Delegate pricing for the 2026 edition is not publicly disclosed. Given the invitation-only model, it is possible that attendance is funded through institutional or development finance mechanisms rather than commercial delegate fees, but this has not been confirmed in any public document reviewed as of verification.
The specific venue for the February 2026 edition has not been published on the official website or in publicly available press materials as of verification. The city is confirmed as Nairobi, Kenya.
No confirmed speaker list or detailed agenda has been published publicly as of verification. The official website and press coverage reference approximately 650 confirmed attendees and describe the thematic focus areas, but a full programme with named sessions and speakers has not been made available.
| Official website | https://aihubfordevelopment.org/nairobi-ai-forum-2026 |
| Register / enquire | https://aihubfordevelopment.org/nairobi-ai-forum-2026 |
| Programme | not disclosed |